


Rising Sun, Falling Star

by Newhieghts



Series: Character Introspection [5]
Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Light Angst, i mean. At the end I guess, this time about eight diy tattoos and briefly about who clover is, uh. - Freeform, you know the drill!! I talk mad shit for a thousand odd words about characters feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23153974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newhieghts/pseuds/Newhieghts
Summary: Clover has eight tattoos.Most of them done drunk, half of them by herself, all of them amateur.One for herself, one for Light, six for stupidity.She doesn’t have enough tattoos, doesn’t have enough memories. That’s what forty five years asleep will do, she supposes.
Series: Character Introspection [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1260443
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Rising Sun, Falling Star

Clover has eight tattoos. 

Most of them done drunk, half of them by herself, all of them amateur. 

Clover has eight tattoos; three on her left hand, two on her right wrist, one behind her right ear and one on the side of her left foot.

A clover at the base of her thumb. A smiley face on her middle knuckle. A pair of cherries on the inside of her wrist. 

A star and Jupiter’s symbol on her other inside wrist.

A dandelion blowing away hidden behind her ear. 

A series of pac-man-esque ghosts along the side of her foot. 

She doesn’t remember getting some, like the ghosts and the cherry. She remembers others like her namesake and the dandelion. She had wanted those sober. She had woken up with others, hungover. 

She likes them all, likes to trace the squiffy lines with the point of her nail. Loves most, but maybe wishes a wobbly smile wasn’t etched into her knuckle for the foreseeable future. 

There is, last but not least, the one at the back of her neck. It is a small sun. It’s hidden under her hair now. 

The sun was her absolute favourite, a shared joke between her and her brother. 

She could not see the ink and Light certainly couldn’t. A funny sort of poetry that the blind Light could not see the inky light of the sun. 

Nobody loves the light like the blind man, she thinks, laughingly, hearing her brother’s voice quote the line. 

Nobody loved her tattoo like him. 

Nobody loved him like her. 

By now, and it had been a while since they uncovered the truth of rhizome-9, she had run out of tears. Tears would only serve in washing away the ink on her skin. Light wouldn’t want her to cry, besides. How silly to cry over a lost brother; she’s a grown up now and has lost people before. 

She touches where she thinks the tattoo is, but she can’t remember if she is aiming too high or too low. The sun never stays in the same place. Rising and setting, East and West. There’s something hopeful about a rising sun and the dawn of a new day. 

Clover has eight tattoos. One for herself, one for Light. Six for stupidity. She doesn’t quite have the full memory of the needle in her neck, but she has plenty of memories of Light. 

She should have more. 

She should have more memories, period. More tattoos. More wrinkles in her skin, and she never thought she’d want that. 

She had plans, goddamnit. She had a life. One that didn’t include a third nonary game. Oh, she’s wept about this before, countless times. In front of most everyone. 

She had wanted to be a secret from these strangers. She had wanted to be ditzy and dumb and make them think she was harmless. She had been. She had been exactly what she wanted to be. 

She had been ditzy and dumb and so frighteningly smart. 

Alice had found her in private moments and laughed at her acting, laughed in the way a friend laughs in amazement. 

She had wanted to be a secret from everyone but Alice, and then she had to start crying. 

The world is revealed in a single tear. An entire person is found in the salt of a sob. She may well have handed them a scalpel and presented her neck. 

She had cried and cried and mourned and mourned. She had told them her secret herself. 

She had cried in anger and screamed in fury and wanted to take Akane’s head off. She wanted to spit at Junpei for having a life and getting what he wanted when she was robbed of it. 

She wants to eat the world raw for what it’s done to her. Some dark corner of her mind wants to see Akane suffer for the sins she’s committed against Clover, against Light, against Junpei. 

She has less sympathy for Junpei nowadays. Was it this timeline he betrayed her after she trusted him; someone who wasn’t Alice? Was it this timeline where he was willing to sacrifice her for Quark’s sake? 

She loses track. 

Does it make people bad if they did things in the branches of time that they haven’t done now? 

Her fingers curl in on herself. If so, she may well be the devil. 

She’s so angry these days and so envious and so lonely. 

She has eight tattoos and looking at them makes her heart hurt more than any inked needle could. 

She has eight tattoos and she can’t see one of them. 

She has eight tattoos. Simple as. 

Now all of the people stranded here know her true self; her angry, desperate, loving self. They know, or they should, that not a drop of her is ditzy or dumb. She likes fun, sure. She likes to get stupid tattoos and make questionable decisions. She does dumb things but she isn’t dumb. 

She wishes more people saw that. 

That beneath the ink of eight small tattoos is not what they think. 

She’s so much more than what they think, but now, even she doesn’t know who she is or what she might’ve been. 

“Forty five years,” she mumbles. She should be dead. Her skin should be shrivelled. And yet. 

She catches sight of herself in the mirror. Her fringe a little too long, roots starting to show. Her clothes a little too revealing. Her skin far too soft and young. She pulls at it, wondering how something as simple as the cold and sleep can preserve a person. 

Her skin is still of a nineteen year old’s, her tattoos have not faded, her hair has not turned the grey-blonde of her father and brother. (unless you count the roots, which she doesn’t.) 

“Vanity is the flatterer of the souls you know,” comes a voice accompanied with the click of heels. “One day you’ll turn away and your face will still be in the mirror.”

“I’m not vain!” Protests Clover, dropping her skin and stepping back from the cloudy mirror. “I was just... looking.” Which doesn’t sound much better. 

“Hair growing out,” Alice comments, settling herself on a bed. “I suppose you’ll just have to let it. I don’t imagine there’s any pink dye around these parts.” 

Clover’s shoulder’s sag. “Yeah. Guess not.” Another part of Light. This time, she can see it. 

“Are you alright, Clover? You seem... I don’t know. Unlike yourself.” 

Clover swallows and nods in quick succession. “I have a favour to ask.”

“Of course,” Alice welcomes her. Alice will always help Clover. She’s endlessly glad for Alice’s presence. “What is it?”

“Can you look at the back of my neck and tell me what you see?” 

Alice pats the space beside her and Clover sits. “Do you have a spot or a rash or— oh!” Alice lifts up the bubblegum curls for a better look. “Clover did you draw this?”

“I think a friend did. It’s a tattoo. One of those stick and poke things.” 

“Hm. Was this what you wanted me to see? It’s very simple, but I quite like it.”

“You do?”

“Yes. A little star, a curved four pointed one, yes?” She drops her hair with a soft sound. 

“A star?” She turns around with a world of worry in her eyes. “No, no, no! It isn’t a star, it can’t be! It’s a sun! It’s for Light! The joke— it won’t make sense now!” 

“Clover, dear, calm down.” Alice pulls her close into an embrace. “Don’t worry. You say it was a joke between you and Light? Well, stars emit light, don’t they?”

“But we both thought it was a sun!”

She doesn’t even have this. She can’t stop losing Light. She can’t even have what she can’t see. 

She wishes Light was here as Alice said. She wishes she wasn’t here, wasn’t an esper, wishes for the most impossible things. She wishes on falling stars. She wishes on the back of her neck.

“Ah,” Alice soothes her and pets her hair. “Once we leave we can tell Light and you can laugh. A new joke.”

“We both know we aren’t leaving here and we both know Light is dead,” Clover argues with her head in Alice’s shoulder and her arms around her back. “It’s ruined. It’s supposed to be a sun.” 

What is a rising sun compared to a falling star? What is life compared to death? 

Stars die years before those who witness their disappearance even know. Maybe it’s more like Light than she thinks. Dead and Clover won’t know until years too late. 

Alice laughs, the way a friend laughs to make you happy. “Oh, Clover. The sun is also a star, don’t you know?”


End file.
